1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print color managing apparatus, a print color managing method, and a recording medium storing therein a program for performing management of color accuracy in a printing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, it has been attempted in the field of offset printing to operate a printing device in accordance with domestic and international standards in an effort to achieve better printing quality control. According to ISO (International Standard Organization) 12647-2, allowable errors, tone curves, etc., are enumerated as items for evaluating the management of color accuracy.
Recently, the importance of managing colors accurately in accordance with standards such as ISO standards has also been acknowledged with respect to proofs in a printing system for producing prints directly from digital data (so-called “digital printing”).
In order to continuously produce stable prints with few color variation errors, it is effective to incorporate an automatic calibration means into a printing device. Such an automatic calibration means periodically monitors the color of a print, and automatically performs a color feedback correction control process on the monitored color. More specifically, the automatic calibration means acquires data of a color sample repeatedly at given intervals, calculates the color difference between the acquired data and a target value for the color sample, and corrects the color of the print in order to cancel the color difference.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-112470 discloses an apparatus for and a method of automatically performing a calibration process using data that is read by a sensor in an apparatus. The publication states that the apparatus determines whether or not the calibration process should be carried out, depending on a deviation of the read data for each print job, each day, or each month, for example.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-224732 discloses an image forming apparatus incorporating an image reading apparatus, which has an automatic calibration means.